Yesterday, I mentioned a Communist Chinese press release that exhorted Westerners to stop calling the mountain Mt. Everest. Now the Hindustan Times puts it in perspective with Beijing campaigns to rename Mt Everest as Mt Qomolangma:
China has launched an intensive campaign to make the west in particular stop calling the world’s highest peak as Mount Everest and instead refer to it by its Chinese name Mount Qomolangma. It says that the mountain is very sacred to the Tibetans.More names for Mt. Everest by following the link.
The campaign was officially launched on Monday in all the newspapers. The Chinese Daily accused "British colonialists" of "ignorance and arrogance" in persisting with references to Mt Everest. "British colonialists raped the sacred mountain of the Tibetans by giving it a false name."
"Until today the world is still persistently humiliating Mt Qomolangma with English-language hegemonism," says the article in the China Daily.
The name Everest was given to the mountain in 1865 in honour of Sir George Everest who was then surveyor-general of India. He mapped the peak in 1852. But China claims the peak was first mapped in 1717 by Qing dynasty officials. It justifies its occupation of Tibet on the basis of this claim, says a Daily Telegraph report.
